Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Michael Ovitz to Sell Broad Beach Lots

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems that veteran Hollywood power player Michael Ovitz has decided not to build the 10,000+ square foot compound on Malibu's star-lined (and ever-eroding) Broad Beach that he had custom-designed by architect Steve Giannetti* because he and his missus, Judy, hoisted the three contiguous oceanfront parcels where their custom compound was to be erected on the market with a blistering $29,500,000 price tag.

Property records suggest Mister Ovitz—a man who was (in)famously given $131 million in stock when he was hired on as president of the Walt Disney Company in late 1995 and another $38 million as a cash severance when he was unceremoniously axed by Disney's former and famously autocratic CEO Michael Eisner 14 short months later—acquired the first of his three Broad Beach parcels in April 1982 for an unknown amount of money. An adjacent property was scooped up in October 1998 for an unknown amount and the third property was picked up in December 2002, also for an unknown sum.

All together the three lots encompass just over an acre—47,082 square feet, according to listing details—with 120 feet of beach/ocean frontage. Access to the beach—or at least what's left of it—requires an undignified scramble over the unsightly 4,000+ foot long rock revetment that was put in place a couple years ago at the approximately $20 million expense of Broad Beach home owners who were (and remain) desperate to keep the relentlessly approaching Pacific Ocean from washing up into the professionally decorated living rooms of their multi-million dollar beach houses.

Mister and Missus Ovitz razed the three houses that once stood on the properties to make way for a tycoon-style compound that, as per marketing materials, was designed with 8 bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms, including a "romantic" master suite complete with sitting area, fireplace, private balcony and sauna. Other planned creature comforts include a swimming pool and spa, a paddle tennis court, an office, and, of course, a screening room. Extensive planned patios, decks and balconies extend the the living areas to the salt and seat misty outdoors.

Mister and Missus Ovitz are well known as voracious collectors of blue chip contemporary artwork and recently completed construction on their in-town compound, an impressive and aggressively austere 28,000-ish square foot residence-slash-private museum on a multi-acre private promontory above Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills (CA) designed by cutting edge architect Michael Maltzan.

NOTE (Later same day): Turns our Mister and Missus Ovitz are divorced or, at least, long ago split up. Not sure how we missed that important detail. Must have been last night's third gin & tonic. Mister Ovitz, so the papers say, current squires fancy shoe mogul Tamara Mellon..

*Mister Giannetti has certainly worked his architectural magic a variety of vernaculars but even the most brief perusal of his digital marketing portal reveals he specializes in substantial and casually luxurious East Coast-y clapboard- or shingle-sided residences in some L.A.'s more affluent West Side zip codes. He designed a Hamptons-style micro-compound a few doors down from Mister Ovitz's Broad Beach lots that's currently owned by Friends co-creator Marta Kaufmann and her composer husband Michael Skloff. He's also the man responsible for the nearly 13,000 square foot mansion late philanthropist Nancy Daly had built in 2002 on Malibu's brutishly expensive Carbon Beach and that was purchased in October 2010 for not quite $37 million by a corporate entity controlled—Your Mama has been told by several sources who tend to know these sorts of things—by junk bond bigwig Michael Milken.Listing photos: Pritchett Rapt & Associates

Mike and Judy Ovitz have loved separately for some time. She lives in a more modest ranch-style house.

Visitors to Mike's art showcase house in Benedict Canyon are supplied with slippers, the kind found in some museums. Upon arrival, visitor's cars are taken away and parked in a large underground garage. Haven't been there, but a friend has and described the experience.